Origen · a new plain-English translation from the Greek and Latin
When you read in the Gospel: "But Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned," and likewise in the book that recounts the deeds of the apostles, which says of them that they "were filled" with "the Spirit," beware of thinking that the apostles are equal to the Savior. Rather, know that Jesus and the apostles and any other of the saints are full of the Holy Spirit, each according to the measure of his own vessel; and just as, for
example's sake, if you wished to say: these vessels are full of wine or oil, you do not thereby indicate that they are full in equal measure -- since one vessel can hold a pint, another a jar, another an amphora -- in the same way both Jesus and Paul were full of the Holy Spirit; but Paul's vessel was far smaller than Jesus' vessel, and yet each was, according to
its own measure, filled completely. Thus, having received baptism, the Savior was "full" of the Holy Spirit, who came upon him "in the form of a dove" and "led him" by the Spirit. For since "as many as" these "are sons of God," while he, beyond all of them, is properly the Son of God, he too had to be led by the Holy Spirit. For it is written: "And he was led into the desert by the Spirit for forty
days, and was tempted by the devil." For forty days he is tempted, and what the temptations were we do not know; perhaps they were omitted for this reason, that they were too great to be entrusted to writing. And if it is right to put it this way: just as "the world could not contain the books," if everything that Jesus taught and did had been written down, so too the world
could not have borne the temptations of those days, by which the Lord was tempted by the devil, had Scripture told of them. It is enough for us to know only this much, that "for forty days he was in the desert and was tempted by the devil, and ate nothing in those days"; for he was mortifying the perception of the flesh by continuous, unbroken fasting. "And when the days were completed, he was hungry. And the devil said to him: If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread."
"Tell" -- "this stone." Which stone? Surely the one the devil was pointing to, the one he wants turned into bread. What sort of temptation is this -- that when the Son asks the Father for bread and the Father does not give a stone, this adversary, shifty and deceitful, should offer a stone in place of bread? This is the whole of what the devil wanted: that the stone should become bread, and not
that people should eat bread, but that they should feed on the stone which the devil had pointed out in place of bread. I think that to this very day the devil points out a stone and urges each person to say: "tell this stone to become bread." With every temptation by which human beings were to be tempted, the Lord, according to his assumption of flesh, was tempted first. And he is tempted for this reason: that we too, through his victory, might conquer. What I am saying
will perhaps be obscure, unless it is made clearer by an example. If you see heretics eating the falsehood of their own doctrines in place of bread, know that their stone is the discourse which the devil points out to them. And do not suppose that he has only one stone; he has many stones, concerning which he is introduced in Matthew saying: "tell these stones to become loaves." Marcion said it, and the devil's stone became
is bread. Valentinus said this, and another stone was turned into bread for him; Basilides too had this kind of bread, and so did the other heretics. Hence we must take careful precaution, lest perhaps, by eating the devil's stone, we think we are feeding on the bread of God. Otherwise, what would have been the temptation in the stone becoming bread and being eaten by the Savior? For let us imagine that, at the devil's proposal, the Lord had turned the stone into bread
and had eaten what he himself had made by his own power, and had satisfied his hunger: what sort of temptation would this be, what victory for the devil, if these things were written? These things, as we have said, once their reasoning is closely examined, show both that it would have been a temptation, had it happened, and that the victory lay in its being scorned. At the same time it is shown that this bread, which would be made from a stone, is not the word of God that nourishes man,
about which it is written: ‘Not on bread alone is man to live, but on every utterance that comes forth from the mouth of God shall he live.’ I answer you, O shape-shifter and wicked one, who do not fear to tempt me: there is another bread, the word of God, which gives life to man. And let us also observe that these words are spoken not by the Son of God, but by the man whom
the Son of God deigned to take on. For he answers as though speaking as a man, and says: 'It is written, man shall not live by bread alone,' by which it is clear that it was not God but man who was tempted. Carefully winnowing the sense of Scripture, I think I have found the reason why John did not describe the Lord's temptation, but only Matthew, Luke, and Mark did so. For John, because
he had made his beginning from God, saying, ‘In the beginning existed the Word, and the Word existed with God, and the Word was God,’ could not have set forth only the order of the divine generation—that he was from God and with God—and after he had expressed it, added: ‘And the Word was made flesh.’ Further, since God cannot be tempted, and it was of God that he was speaking, he therefore does not introduce him as tempted by the devil
he does not introduce him as tempted. But because 'the book of the generation of Jesus Christ' tells in the Gospel of him as a man who had been born of Mary, and in Luke his genealogy is described, and in Mark it is the man who is tempted—for that reason a like reply is reported of him: 'man shall not live by bread.' If, then, the Son of God was made man for your sake and
is tempted, you, who are by nature a man, ought not to be indignant if perhaps you are tempted. But if, when tempted, you imitate that man who was tempted for your sake, and overcome every temptation, you will have hope together with him who was then a man, but has now ceased to be man. For he who was once a man, after he had been tempted and 'the devil departed from
him until' the time of death, 'and having risen from the dead, dies no more.' Every man is subject to death; this one, therefore, who no longer dies at all, is no longer man, but is God. But if he who was once man is God, and you must become like him, since 'we shall be like him and shall see him as he is,' you
...it will also be necessary that God come to be in Christ Jesus, to whom belongs dominion for ages of ages. Amen.